We have a number of forum moderators and administrators to assist djrice in the running of this website, and particularly the forum. We have a list of rules - the AUP - which provide guidance for all members of the forum as to what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour on the forums. Given the very mixed audience we have on the website (young people, adults, staff, parents, senior officers, potentially the press, etc) the forum staff have to walk a very fine line in the application of the AUP.
In the last few weeks we’ve gained ourselves a new forum and redesigned website. We’ve also gained a number of new staff on the website.
However we appear to be having the same old questions and discussions about moderation that we’ve always had. So lets deal with a couple of the more interesting comments. I also refer those of you who perhaps haven’t been here for this before to a couple of reasonably relevant examples of what we’ve discussed before regarding moderation. There are probably better ones, but these are the ones I found reasonably quickly - here:
http://forums.aircadetcentral.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=6103
or here:
http://forums.aircadetcentral.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7965
or those questioning moderator anonymity (and please remember your own anonymous username when questioning AnonyMod™- I’m sure there isn’t any irony in that…;)) to here:
http://forums.aircadetcentral.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7026
and here:
http://forums.aircadetcentral.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7965
Members explicitly sign up to the Acceptable Usage Policy on the website, so by using the forums, you’ve agreed to abide by them. The AUP hasn’t changed significantly from the AUP on the old site. However it seems fair to say that with a new site and with new site staff comes a reboot of the existing rules. This happens in cycles, and is usually preceeded by something - whether its a change to the forums, new staff, massive disagreements, trolls, etc etc. Just because we haven’t rigidly applied them for some time doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t, and it doesn’t mean the rules of the site have changed. Something changes to “upset” the balance of the forum, and it takes a while for the balance to be reset. That’s exactly whats happening here. It has happened before, it’ll happen again.
I for one believe that we let the balance get too skewed towards a vocal minority on the old forums, and the changes here, new mods, etc give us the opportunity to address this. What do I mean by the vocal minority? I mean the members who pushed the boundaries of the AUP and got away with it. Examples would be the personal abuse, swearing, sniping, trolling, intolerance of new members, etc etc. Usually all dressed up as banter.
Sirvicalsmeer, you keep claiming that excessive moderation will kill the forum. I’d say (from experience and from the comments we’ve recieved from non-posters and ex members) that our problem of late has been the exact opposite, and the antagonism and general tone of the forum has been why new members don’t stick around, lurkers don’t post, regulars haven’t signed up to the new forums, etc etc. So instead of undermoderating (or allowing you to self moderate) as we have done and let you guys just get on with it and see who comes crawling out at the end, we’ll now moderate and try to make this site somewhere for NEW members, reasonable and civil discussion, make the place a bit more welcoming and increase the membership.
So, we are asking for you to abide by the rules. Its not difficult, and you signed up to them, so I guess you agreed with them at some point. If everybody sticks to the rules, then the Mods don’t need to moderate. Believe me, we don’t want to be snipping posts and removing or locking threads - its a pain to do! We just want this place to be as accessible to as wide an audience as possible, particularly now a significant amount of time and effort has been put in to keep the forums alive and well, rather than the forum owner deciding that enough was enough and switching them off.
If you want to discuss moderator anonymity, I’m quite happy to start a new topic for that too. Obviously user anonymity would also be up for the same discussion.